


Sentinels 1

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: AU, Gen, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 17:52:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13816368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: Set some 600 years in the future; a book is found at an archaeological dig





	Sentinels 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sentinel Thursday prompt 'companion'

Sentinels part 1

by Bluewolf

'Historically - or perhaps that should be prehistorically - communities that had a sentinel were fortunate; they flourished in a way that communities lacking a sentinel did not; could not. But at the same time, a community that had only a sentinel was almost worse off than those communities that did not have one. For a sentinel on his own was handicapped. He could fail in the middle of a hunt, becoming unaware even of the hunter standing next to him. He needed a companion. He needed someone to help him direct and control his senses.

'In more recent times, sentinels - who had never been numerous - were even fewer, and those that there were seemed to be drawn to professions that protected the members of their communities; but those professions tended to be dangerous, for there were many criminals who saw the police as deadly enemies. And once again those sentinels who had a companion fared better than those who lacked one. A sentinel still needed someone to help him direct and control his senses.'

Balare raised his eyes from the nearly six-hundred-year old book he had found, stored with a few other artifacts in a box made of a material he did not recognize but was clearly very durable, when his almost graduated archaeological class explored and excavated the ruins of buildings it was known had been destroyed in the east-west war of 2093. (The language had changed little in the intervening centuries, although everyone knew it had changed quite a lot in the six hundred years before that. There were one or two words he didn't know but whose meaning he could infer from context.) All the contents of the box were in excellent condition.

He should, of course, have given the box and its contents to Ellai, the site director, immediately after opening it carefully to see what was in it - which he was authorised to do - and discovered it held more than relatively routine artifacts, but he had been curious about the slim, eighty-two page book. And he had been very careful to wear plastiskin gloves when he opened it.

His attention had been caught by the two not quite identical repeated sentences - 'He needed a companion. He needed someone to help him direct and control his senses.'

Returning his attention to the book - Sentinels by Blair Sandburg - he read on rapidly, but found nothing to indicate where a sentinel's companion could be found, or how he could be identified; just more information on what a sentinel could do, and he already knew much of that. In his world sentinels were relatively common, and always employed in the catering industry.

Though from what this book said... that had not always been the case.

Finishing the book, Balare replaced it very carefully in the box, which he would give to Ellai perhaps an hour into the morning, saying that he had just found it. That he had opened it and that he felt the contents were important enough to be given special treatment. He suspected that Ellai would guess that he had found the box the previous day, possibly after the students had left the site - as their teacher he could work longer than the hours they were permitted to work - and succumbed to the temptation to delay handing it in so that he could look at the book; Ellai knew his inquisitive nature too well. But he would understand, and as long as there was no damage to the contents of the box - and Balare had very been careful to avoid damage - he would maintain the fiction that there had been no delay between the box being found and being handed over.

There was little in the book - apart from the references to a companion - that Balare didn't already know. Let the university academics try to find any hidden meaning; he was happy concentrating on fieldwork. Though he did wonder... would the kind of sentinel mentioned in the book be of practical help to him, as an archaeologist?

Possibly. But as long as sentinels were automatically nudged into working as chefs, where their senses enabled them to produce expensive gourmet dishes for the rich, he would never know.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Note - Balare is an analogue of Blair. Ellai is an analogue of Eli Stoddard.


End file.
